Shropshire Magazine

From left: Paul Rushworth turns up the heat on his audience; Performing on board a cruise ship in 1977 with his family; Paul Daniels opens the Rushworths’ new warehouse in 1998.

Neil Thomas picks a card — any card — and is comprehensively bamboozled by the magic of county entertainer Paul Rushworth

Paul Rushworth opens his wallet and flames leap out, threatening to singe his eyebrows. It’s a pretty impressive party piece, but he has a few more tricks up his sleeve.

He pulls out a pack of playing cards and asks the woman sitting next to me to take one and memorise it without showing it to him. It’s the nine of clubs. She places it back in the pack. After shuffling the pack and firing off a few amusing one-liners, he presents a card which isn’t the nine of clubs. Oh no . . . the trick has misfired. He looks sheepish, throws out a couple of jokes by way of apology and then pulls a small case from his inside jacket pocket, sealed by a clip and bound by elastic bands. He undoes the case and opens it to present . . . you’ve guessed it, the nine of clubs.

It is an impressive little routine, done with style, expert timing and an appealing sense of humour. With that, he’s off to charm and amaze a few more guests.

Paul is working the tables at the Shropshire Gentleman’s Club annual ball at Goldstone Hall, near Market Drayton, a glittering occasion attended by around 150 guests and raising money for Hope House children’s hospice.

He is working under his stage name of Paul Ray, comedy magician, impressionist and singer. I get to meet him a month later when he is entertaining a group of pensioners at a Christmas party at The Wroxeter Hotel. The 53-year-old born-and-bred Salopian has a gentle style and his good humour charms the audience. After a smattering of close-up tricks before lunch, he returns afterwards to delight the diners with a few songs, his diverse range of styles including Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, Frank Sinatra, John Lennon and Neil Diamond.

Effortless

It all looks so effortless and self-assured that, when we find a quiet corner in the hotel’s lounge bar for a chat, he completely surprises me by revealing how pathologically shy he is.

“I was incredibly shy and tongue-tied at school and my teachers would never have believed I would become a performer,” he says. “I’ve surprised myself a little.”

He is certainly an accomplished performer these days — and far from shy if a cruise with wife Jane last year to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary is anything to go by.

“I could not help myself, getting up on the mike and doing my Elvis and Frank Sinatra. My wife is used to it and didn’t complain!”

Pick a card . . . any card.

Confidence clearly flows from his 30 years of performing experience. It also must help that showbusiness runs in the family. Paul’s mother and father Geoff and Molly had a magic double act, Geoff Ray and Pat, which was good enough to win them a spot on the popular television talent show Opportunity Knocks, hosted by Hughie Green, in 1967.

“They obviously passed tough auditions to get on the show though they didn’t win it,” recalls Paul, who was 11 at the time.

One national competition Geoff and Molly did win, though, was The People Talent Contest of 1963 — a remarkable achievement given that 6,000 entered the event.

“They won £1,000 which is quite a lot of money now but was a fortune back then. Dad was working at RAF Shawbury as a radio technician in those days, while mum worked in a dry cleaner’s. Funnily enough, when her boss found out that she was an entertainer and had won this competition, he wasn’t best pleased — which seems a strange reaction.”

An illustration of the level that Geoff Ray and Pat reached in their careers is that they also appeared on the bill at the London Palladium.

Nearly 50 years later Geoff is still on the showbiz circuit, performing a lot of close-up magic these days — and father and son occasionally appear on the same bill. You can tell from Paul’s conversation that Geoff has clearly been an inspiration.

“Mum and dad had a brilliant act and were completely self-taught. Nowadays you can buy new tricks but back then my dad had to learn all his from books.

“He was also, incidentally, the first judo black belt in Shropshire back in 1964,” Paul says proudly. “He’s a sixth Dan and an examiner.”

Paul enjoyed an early taste of the showbiz life when his mum and dad signed up for nine months as the resident magic turn aboard a cruise ship — and included him and his younger sister Julie in the act.

“Julie went into a sword-box and had 15 real swords pushed through the box . . . and I came out of an empty box dressed as a waiter complete with a tray of drinks,” Paul remembers.

Growing up in such a stimulating atmosphere, it seemed only a matter of time before Paul took his first tentative steps in showbiz.

“It was around 1976 when I was 19 going on 20 and I started doing impressions,” he recalls. He mimicked popular stars of the time, television comedy characters Frank Spencer (as played by Michael Crawford) and Rigsby (Leonard Rossiter), legendary comedian Max Wall, and boxer Henry Cooper. He has since added the likes of Delboy Trotter (David Jason) from TV’s Only Fools and Horses, comedians Jimmy Cricket and Billy Connolly, as well as magician Paul Daniels.

“I’d been practising them in private since my mid-teens, I loved doing them and, although I knew a few tricks, I’d rather gone against magic at this time.

“I remember the first show I did, I had to do two spots. In the first spot I died a death and I wasn’t keen on carrying on. My dad said: ‘you go on but have a little magic to fall back on’. His idea was that if the impressions and jokes fell flat, people would be impressed by the skill of the magic and you’d get some applause. That’s really how I started doing the magic.”

Paul’s confidence soared in 1981 when he was a winner in a national talent show, England Entertains, with the final at Lancashire sea resort Southport. He was polishing his act all the time, emulating the level of professionalism of his parents — and now he was able to command a fee to boot.

“The applause is in some ways reward enough . . . but to get paid as well!”

Paul, though, is more than happy to employ his talents for the greater good and can frequently be found donating his services if the cause is right. Such an event at the Lord Hill Hotel in Shrewsbury last October, for instance, was a sell-out when Paul and Geoff, along with comedy magician Mel Bardsley and singer/musician Paul Challinor, helped to raise funds for Severn Hospice.

Paul and Geoff are much in demand throughout the Midlands and occasionally in London, though the bulk of their work is in Shropshire where their fame is well established.

There is even a third generation of magician coming through in the shape of Paul and Jane’s 19 year-old son Joe.

Joe Rushworth after he became British Champion of Stage Manipulation, 2008.

“He does general magic and manipulation and is very good,” says dad proudly. “Joe has followed my dad’s act, really skilful ‘manipulation magic’ performed to music. Joe is quite remarkable really. In the magic world he stands head and shoulders above a lot of well established magicians.”

At the tender age of 19 Joe has already twice won the International Brotherhood of Magicians Manipulation Act of the Year award, worked on a Gala Magic Show in Kentucky, USA; appeared in two Young Magician of the Year finals and performed at The Magic Circle’s centenary celebrations.

“Joe is very shy, like I used to be, and because he has done magic for so many years, and grew up with it; he does not see anything in his achievements. He does a very skilful act, one that most magicians would give a lot to be able to do,” adds Paul.

Talent clearly runs in the family. “Our other son Tom is 15 and I think in a few years time he could well be a comedian. He is good at remembering jokes and he does different voices.”

Showbusiness clearly keeps the Rushworths well occupied.

Paul says: “I’m probably out once or twice a week. The age range of the audience tends to be 25 upwards. To be honest, under-20s terrify me, particularly teenagers,” he says with a smile. “They either seem to be sceptical or bored by magic,” he adds, although when I see him a month later he says a birthday show he did for 14-year-olds at Shrewsbury School went down a storm.

The toughest ‘gig’ locally, though, surely has to be entertaining the Shropshire Magical Society, which meets monthly at the Lord Hill. Its honorary president is Paul Daniels and it has a membership of around 70, who between them probably know every trick in the book.

“Coming up with something that no one knows is not easy,” says Paul, who, as press officer, is charged with raising the profile of the society which has its annual dinner on March 13.

Paul’s talents are also in demand by the magic industry on a larger stage.

Honour

“Last year I had the honour of compering the opening show at our annual British Magic Convention, which was held at The Southport Theatre,” he says.

“And two years ago, I compered the World Junior Magic Championships, a three-hour marathon, held at The Opera House in Blackpool, which was where the recent Royal Variety Show was held. That was quite an honour for me.”With so many calls to entertain and his role with Shropshire Magical Society, you wonder how Paul finds time for the day job, the family furniture business. Rushworths has been creating bespoke furniture and restoring antiques since the 1950s and operating from a large store in Ennerdale Road, Harlescott, since the 1980s.

“It’s an important part of our lives because obviously it pays the bills,” says Paul. “The magic provides an outlet but you couldn’t live on the proceeds of it, even though I’m pretty busy. Perhaps I do too much for nothing,” he says with a warm smile which suggests he is not serious.

It does, though, raise the question as to whether anyone could make a living out of professional magic nowadays.

It could be the reason why Paul feels that vague unease when confronted by a teenage audience — that magic has lost the pulling power of its heyday, that we are sated, and that a cynical, world-weary and more questioning nation can no longer be surprised.

Perhaps magic, a staple of old-fashioned variety, has not travelled particularly well into the 21st century, although making animals out of balloons and other simpler magic still seems a popular enough pastime at under-fives parties.

Paul grew up when David Nixon and Tommy Cooper held the nation in awe with their primetime TV comedy magic shows of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s and Paul Daniels picked up their mantle in style throughout the ’80s and ’90s. It is difficult to think of an equivalent today. Perhaps magic will flourish now in a smaller, less celebrated arena, where the Rushworth family are more than playing their part in keeping the art alive.

Watching Paul Ray in action at Shropshire Gentleman’s Club ball, hoodwinking hardened businessmen and slick professionals with his sleight of hand, charming their wives with sharp one-liners and twinkling eyes, you feel it is inconceivable that magic has had its day. With a trick or two yet up its sleeve, magic still has the power to amaze and amuse.

• See www.magicrays.co.uk